The production and consumption of Information and Communication Technologies (or ICTs) has become embedded within our societies. The influence and implications of this have an impact at a macro level, in the way our governments, economies, and businesses operate, and in our everyday lives. This handbook is about the many challenges presented by ICTs. It sets out an intellectual agenda that examines the implications of ICTs for individuals, organizations, democracy, and the economy. Explicity interdisciplinary, and combining empirical research with theoretical work, it is organised around four themes covering the knowledge economy; organizational dynamics, strategy, and design; governance and democracy; and culture, community and new media literacies. It provides a comprehensive resource for those working in the social sciences, and in the physical sciences and engineering fields, with leading contemporary research informed principally by the disciplines of anthropology, economics, philosophy, politics, and sociology.
The Challenges of ICTs; PART I: THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY AND ICTS; The ICT Paradigm; Markets and Policies in New Knowledge Economies; Globalization of the ICT Labour Force; Productivity and ICTs: A Review of the Evidence; Economic Policy Analysis and the Internet: Coming to Terms with a Telecommunications Anomaly; The Diffusion of the Internet and the Geography of the Digital Divide in the United States; The Economics of ICTs: Building Blocks and Implications; PART II: ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS, STRATEGY, DESIGN, AND ICTS; On Confronting Some of the Common Myths of Information Systems Strategy Discourse; Information Technology Sourcing: Fifteen Years of Learning; ICT, Organizations, and Networks; Information Technology and the Dynamics of Organizational Change; Making Sense of ICT, New Media, and Ethics; PART III: GOVERNANCE, DEMOCRACY, AND ICTS; Electronic Networks, Power, and Democracy; e-Democracy: The History and Future of an Idea; Communicative Entitlements and Democracy: The Future of the Digital Divide Debate; Governance and State Organization in the Digital Era; Privacy Protection and ICT: Issues, Instruments, and Concepts; Surveillance, Power, and Everyday Life; PART IV: CULTURE, COMMUNITY, AND NEW MEDIA LITERACIES; New Media Literacies: At the Intersection of Technical, Cultural, and Discursive Knowledges; Youthful Experts? A Critical Appraisal of Children's Emerging Internet Literacy; The Interrelations Between Online and Offline: Questions, Issues, and Implications; ICTs and Political Movements; ICTs and Communities in the 21st Century: Challenges and Perspectives; ICTs and Inequality: Net Gains for Women?